Blurred Lines

Living in China is great...usually, although there are always a few things that will frustrate even the most stalwart of souls. There are a few things that never cease to amaze me when it comes to China. 

The first is the forwardness of the girls here. 

Usually the first thing you will hear coming out of a girl'

ahhh, the classic "misspelled flirtation" technique.
The poor grammar is subtle. Overall a good effort.

s mouth is "I'm so shy," or "I'm a shy girl." The next thing you hear is "You are so handsome, can I have your phone number?" 

Now, I'm a pretty nice guy, so of course I say yes each and every time. Which means I am now WeChat friends with 30 or more girls who I couldn't pick out in a lineup if my life was on the line. 

I really need to find a way to just say no without being rude, but I guess that wouldn't make for any good stories. 

The second thing is the strange ideas of health that people have here. 

Overall, they are very concerned with everyone's health except their own. Take, for example the very nice man who tells me that I shouldn't eat street food because it isn't healthy. After berating me over my food choices, he turns to me with perfect charity and offers me a cigarette. 

Then there is my personal favorite. The Chinese love of the outdoors, or at least letting the outdoors indoors. 

Pictured: Healthy, Fresh air. If compared to a
carton a day smoking habit.

A closed door is a rare find in this country, and the windows have been left open so long that they probably form a vital part of the structural integrity of the buildings they inhabit. People get up early in the morning to jog and practice tai chi and breathe deeply of the fresh air. 

Then you try to close a window, or a door. Instantly they begin scolding you. "Don't you know fresh air is healthy?" 

And no, that haze surrounding those buildings is not fog. Comparatively, the air in that picture isn't all that bad. It's when you can't actually see the tops of the skyscrapers that you should probably stop breathing with your lungs. 

Now, don't take any of this the wrong way. I love the Chinese people. They are very genuine, helpful people. It's just a bit strange going from a culture where we tiptoe around and try not to offend anyone, to a culture where that's a bit of an afterthought. If the thought occurs at all. 

They will generally go out of their way to help you. I've even had students buy me lunch because I forgot to bring money with me. When I try to pay them back they reply "It is my honor to pay for you." 

Well, until next time. 

China, and the horrors that lurk in the deep

Welcome back! I'll try not to keep you too long, unless you want to stay awhile. In that case, pull up a chair, pour yourself a hot cup of tea (coffee is for non-Chinese people) and enjoy the stories of untold horrors that stem from living abroad.

Since Halloween is this week, I thought it might be nice to tell a scary story. This story is true and unabridged.

Imagine yourself in a foreign country. You wake up one morning as usual to get ready for work. Doing as you do, you step into the shower and turn the water on. So far so good. Somewhere between your second "rinse and repeat" and the fourth verse of "Walking on Sunshine" you feel something brush up against your foot.

"Oh no!" you think, imagining the worst as you frantically scrub shampoo from your eyes. What if it's a snake? or a spider? or a rat?

It's worse.

As you blink away the soapy tears, you look down and see a piece of toilet paper floating past your foot. And it has brought friends.

Your drain has backed up into your shower, the drain that is shared with the sewer system for the building.

In an impressive feat of acrobatic skill, you vault out of the shower and finish cleaning off with abrasive cleaning products that should only be used for sinks, or really tough mold.

You call the landlord to fix it, trying to explain through broken Chinese and English that your shower is vomiting up it's stomach contents.

Several interminable hours later, he shows up with a few of his friends, armed with nothing more than a drain snake, a carton of cigarettes and muddy boots.

After tramping mud through your apartment, in what you can only assume to be some type of traditional Chinese dance to the shower gods, they fix your shower and leave.

Staring in dismay at the fresh layer of soil in your apartment, you go off on an adventure to find a mop.

When you return, the landlord is already inside and has thoughtfully decided to mop your apartment.

You smile and give a kind xie xie nin, and step out of his way so he can finish. He flashes a tobacco stained grin, and plops his mop back into the water bucket.....Oh no!

Oh yes.

The bucket is not in fact a bucket, it's the toilet. Your apartment has just been "cleaned" with toilet water.

Now excuse me while I go bathe in a bucket of lysol.

Happy Halloween!

Out With The Old, In With The Older

Let's begin at the best place to do so, the beginning.

China was never on my radar. I mean never. I was always much more interested in Europe and anything to do with the Mediterranean area, Asia just seemed so...foreign. So when some recruiters came to my school during my freshman year at college, really the only thing that caught my interest was the possibility of a year in China where I could actually make money, instead of bleeding it out like a normal trip overseas. 

Fast forward a few years and I'm boarding a 14.5 hour flight to land in a country that is literally as far away from home as I can go without becoming an astronaut. 

I've been here exactly five weeks and a day as of this post, and it's been an experience that is hard to put in to words, so I'll just do some quick summing up and let you fill in the rest with your imagination.

First. It's old...

Thousands of years of history tends to do that to a country.

I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac. They didn't taxi us to the airport itself, we had to ride a bus to get there. Then I almost got hit by a car because traffic laws haven't been invented yet, and finally I passed not one, not two, but six rice paddies that were inside the city limits of Wuhan. 

If you go outside of Wuhan it looks almost like something out of a Normal Rockwell painting (if he was Chinese). I went on a trip to Hongcun and saw a group of ladies washing their clothing in the river because on of the villages we visited didn't have electricity. 

Yes, I felt creepy taking this picture.

My apartment even has a less nostalgic version of the milk man. Because the water isn't safe to drink, we have to have our water delivered in twenty gallon barrels once a week. 

Across the street from my school is an old market where you can go haggle the price of pretty much anything you could ever want, including hand made picture frames and guitars. Then, once I'm done haggling I can head over to eat some food prepared in front of me that definitely wouldn't pass health regulations....in the 1920's. But it tastes great!

Second. It's new...

My first week here I visited the Optics Valley Center of Wuhan. For those of you who follow tennis, this is where the Wuhan Open was held just a few days ago. I totally would have gone, but for some reason I couldn't afford the $7,000 ticket. 

Sorry...it's hard to fit a city block in on picture.
This is just the entrance....

The Optics Valley is best described as the lovechild of Times Square, seven shopping malls, and a quaint European hamlet. Seriously. 

I walked inside and was completely blown away. This place is a shopping mall that takes up an entire city block and ranges from 3 story to six story buildings. It even has an entire French version of Wal-Mart called Carrefour packed inside. The longest walking street in the world winds its way through the bottom section and boasts a German, Italian, and Spanish street. It's incredible. 

Third. It's never what you expect...

I saw an enormous Cathedral one day and thought, wow! I didn't expect to see this here. So I decided to go take a look inside. It was essentially a giant movie theater where you can get married. I was a little disappointed. 

Because "gothic" and "china" are synonyms right?

Then we thought we'd go visit a tiny little Buddhist Temple. Outside was small and unassuming. The entrance fee was 10 RMB ($1.60). It turned out to be a sprawling complex that took us 2 or three hours to explore, including a tower built in the 1200's that you could climb up, if you don't mind practicing your best midget impersonation (the ceilings were really low).

This is where I perfected the art of wishing I knew Kung Fu

Fourth. (Last one, I promise) It's an adventure...

8 hour bus rides with no air conditioning. 

Discovering that the store only takes cash and there isn't an ATM in sight.

Needing to use the bathroom and painfully remembering that China has a BYOTP policy. (bring your own toilet paper).

Standing in the rain and having every cab driver pass you by because they figure they can't understand you.

Teaching a class of "advanced" students, only to realize on day one that they know as much english as you know Chinese.

Spending an entire day at Carrefour (a.k.a. french Wal-Mart) because 10 Million people plus 1 Carrefour equals lines that rival disney world. 

The first time I saw something
that wasn't my hand.
So. Much. Fog. 

Waking up every morning and realizing...I'm actually in China!

Meeting someone new and having dinner at their home that same night. 

Standing on a mountain shrouded in fog when the wind changes directions and suddenly you glimpse a solitary mountain peak rising from the mist.

Honestly, It's been a blast so far. 

I promise the next post won't be so long, it was my fault for waiting a month to write. Apparently a lot can happen in that time. 

Until next time. Zai Jian!